Listen to Me Marlon

There is no comma between the Me and Marlon in the title Listen to Me Marlon. Nobody orders Marlon to listen to them. It is Marlon Brando speaking to himself. Director Stevan Riley dissects hundreds of hours of Marlon Brando’s personal recordings to show the audience an autobiographical documentary; the life and times of Marlon Brando brought to you by Marlon Brando. Not altogether chronological, sometimes contradictory, and downright unconventional at times, Listen to Me Marlon is intriguing to learn about one of Hollywood’s most private, yet revered, figures. It is also one-sided. The only filter we get are Marlon’s recordings; therefore, there is no counterpoint to say, “I disagree” or “that’s not how it went down Marlon.” Listen to Me Marlon is a worthwhile journey and the audience will walk out knowing more than they did going in, but at what cost? Objectivity. Brando had a full digital computer recording made of his head. Why? We have no clue; however, during an abnormally slow and plodding beginning to Riley’s film, the creepy blue digital head mouths Brando’s words emanating from the playback machine. The whole computerized head detail comes off as nothing but a gimmick, a not necessarily so cheap trick. There is no requirement for this thing. Anyone in the theater already knows what Brando looks like; if they do not, this digital projection monstrosity will not complete the picture. It is an odd introduction to what will become a more integrated and compact feature. Is Marlon speaking to us from the grave? Meh.

When Listen to Me Marlon finally gets going, Brando recounts his unhappy childhood, alcoholic mother, abusive father, and escape to New York. Notorious theater instructor Stella Adler takes Brando under her protective wing and after thorough coaching, unleashes Brando on Broadway. A Streetcar Named Desire receives perhaps the most study of any of Brando’s films, even more screen time than The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Brando’s recall of his early rise to fame is the film’s pinnacle. He declares he was “in the right place at the right time”; a rebel in the midst of his own causeless rebellion at a time movie audiences were seeking rebellion on screen, the pre-‘60s he labels the time period. If James Dean had survived, he may have said the same thing later in life. Brando also dives into what made him so famous, his method acting. To paraphrase, when you get a role, sink into it, find a way to do it nobody has ever done before, and then scare the hell out of the audience. Riley shows of the most famous Brando examples, his On the Waterfront ‘Contender’ speech, his orating Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, and his gravelly, cotton-mouthed Godfather, Vito Corleone. Brando also is quite candid about his off screen celebrity, including the myriad of women he nonchalantly worked his way through, even though he did his best to shield it all from the press.

Brando does not spare his scandal-plagued children in his recordings and neither does Riley. Christian Brando went to prison in the ‘90s after shooting his half-sister’s boyfriend. A tearful Marlon on the stand in the trial says it may be because he was a lousy father and the divorce was hard on Christian. The tragedy involving Marlon’s daughter, Cheyenne, also receives cursory coverage, but no new ground is discovered even though we finally here Marlon’s version of events. The Sacheen Littlefeather speech at the 1973 Oscars gets just about as much screen time as Cheyenne Brando. Brando contradicts himself every now and again and Riley adeptly sets him up to be caught. During the arduous Mutiny on the Bounty filming, Brando adamantly proclaimed there are no artists and there is no such thing as art; those folks on screen are merely there to provide the audience a fantasy for a couple of hours. Everybody you see up on the screen is a businessman or merchant merely selling you a product. A mellower Marlon later on extols the virtue of art and artists and forgets his more cynical point of view.

Dissecting and editing such a trove of recordings must be an almost impossible task. The similar 2014 documentary, I Am Ali, only had to work through phone call recordings from a specific era of Mohammed Ali’s life, rather than a truckload of cassette tapes. Riley flashes genius when he juxtaposes Brando’s Mutiny on the Bounty frustrations with his Hollywood squabbles and when he places Brando’s early acclaim with his rosier outlook. On the other hand, Riley falls on his face with the awful computerized head debacle and reminds us over and over again we only get one side of the story when Brando repeatedly emphasizes Francis Ford Coppola is an asshole and everybody lies and invents untrue stories about his legendary delaying tactics on set. We only have Brando’s words here knowing full well there is another documentary to be made to refute him. Documentaries do not lend themselves well to complete subjectivity; they inherently want to poke, prod, and explore the truth. There is no such thing in Listen to Me Marlon, but at least the audience gets to hear the voice of a legendary recluse.